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Written Question
Water Companies: Debts
Tuesday 12th March 2024

Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the financial implications for her policies of trends in the level of debt acquired by water companies.

Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

Water companies are allowed to raise debt to fund the delivery of their services.

Ofwat, as the independent economic regulator, assesses and monitors the financial resilience of each company, including levels of debt, on an individual and ongoing basis and challenges companies where they identify this is needed.

Over recent years, as investment requirements have risen, Ofwat has taken further steps to strengthen the financial resilience of companies. This includes increasing its financial monitoring and improving levels of reporting transparency. As part of this work, Ofwat produces an annual ‘Monitoring Financial Resilience Report’ to provide a publicly available assessment of the financial resilience of each water company.


Written Question
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs: Official Hospitality
Monday 18th December 2023

Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much their Department spent on hospitality in (a) 2021, (b) 2022 and (c) 2023.

Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

We do not routinely publish this data, as has been the case under successive administrations. All Business Units within the Department have a responsibility to keep official hospitality costs as low as possible and demonstrate good value for money. Details of ministerial and senior official hospitality are published on a quarterly basis, and are available on GOV.UK.


Written Question
Environment Agency: Recruitment
Wednesday 3rd May 2023

Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what data her Department holds on the amount of time taken to inform candidates applying for jobs at the Environment Agency of the outcome of their application and whether they have been called for interview in each of the last five years.

Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

The average time taken to inform candidates of the outcome of their application to a job advertised at the Environment Agency for each of the past full five calendar years is shown in the table below.

The data is for the period between the advert close date and the date the applicant was notified of the outcome of their application. The outcome of the application is either for the applicant to be invited to interview or for them to be informed that they have not been invited to interview

Year

Average time taken in working days for applicant to be notified of the outcome of an EA job application

2018

14.6

2019

12.7

2020

16.0

2021

12.7

2022

12.7 for posts advertised using the established EA recruitment system 13.7 for selected posts that have used a different recruitment system for part of 2022


Written Question
Environmental Protection
Friday 28th April 2023

Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what was the average time taken for an environmental permit application to be processed in each year from 2015 to 2023 inclusive.

Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

The average time taken to process applications in each year between 2015 and 2023 is shown below. This covers applications across Water Abstraction, Discharge to Water, Waste and Industrial Processes. There is a widely varying level of complexity in the applications determined which means drawing statistical comparisons across such a wide range doesn’t accurately account for the different requirements.

It is important to note that many application types have seen legislative change and increases in complexity during this time period, making year on year comparison difficult. The Environment Agency have seen a reduction in application quality during this time, requiring additional processing by their permitting department. Backlogs were built up during 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic which the Environment Agency have now largely recovered and they expect 2023/24 to see a reduction in average times.

Year Average of KPI3 (Days):


2015 - 41
2016 - 53
2017 - 64
2018 - 60
2019 - 72
2020 - 89
2021 - 85
2022 - 106
2023 - 107


Written Question
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs: Taxis
Tuesday 1st November 2022

Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much his Department spent on taxi cabs for (a) ministers and (b) civil servants in each of the last three years.

Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

The following table sets out expenditure on taxis in each of the given years. A split by ministers and civil servants could not be obtained on this occasion without incurring disproportionate costs.

Year

Taxi Spend (£)

2019

143,210.25

2020

30,288.49

2021

19,898.34


Written Question
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs: Railways
Tuesday 25th October 2022

Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much his Department spent on first class train travel for (a) ministers and (b) civil servants in (i) 2020, (i) 2021 and (iii) 2022.

Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

The tables below set out the expenditure on first class train travel in each of the given years.

(a) Ministers

Year

Total Cost (£)

Number of Journeys

2020

£564

3

2021

£285

2

2022 to date

£0

0

(b) Civil Servants

Year

Total Cost (£)

Number of Journeys

2020

£1,550

13

2021

£2,066

13

2022 to date

£3,345

20

The department's travel and subsistence policy permits first class travel in a very limited number of circumstances, such as accompanying a Minister or due to a disability. Such travel requires a strong business justification and prior approval by a senior civil servant.


Written Question
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs: Agency Workers
Monday 5th September 2022

Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much his Department has spent on (a) agency workers and (b) agency retainer fees in (i) 2020, (ii) 2021 and (iii) 2022.

Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General

(a) agency workers

Agency workers (more commonly referred to as “contingent labour” or “temporary workers”) are subject to a Cabinet Office controls framework to ensure robust governance of spending in this area.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/contingent-labour-spend-control

Commentary on contingent labour usage, if applicable, is available in departmental annual reports.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/annual-reports-and-accounts-for-central-government-departments

The Crown Commercial Service provides two frameworks specifically for the supply of Contingent Labour which are used by central government departments. These are:

RM3749 - Public Sector Resourcing.

https://www.crowncommercial.gov.uk/agreements/rm3749

This provides a managed service for departmental use including low supplier margins, regular pay rate benchmarking, comprehensive tracking and reporting of contingent labour assignments, full timesheeting and approvals technology and onboarding, contracting and payroll services.

RM6160 - Non Clinical Temporary and Fixed Term Staff

https://www.crowncommercial.gov.uk/agreements/RM6160

This provides access to a range of generalist, specialist and niche contingent labour agencies offering a wide range of suppliers, maximum margins, free transfer to permanent after 12 weeks and onboarding, contracting and payroll services.

Use of these frameworks provides robust governance, visibility, value for money and flexibility in meeting departmental contingent labour needs.

(b) agency retainer fees

We have interpreted agency retainer fees as the fees charged at the commencement of the provision of a search recruitment service. This is only applicable when recruiting for a permanent or fixed term post.

Agency retainer fees are not applicable to the contingent labour market.

There is no recorded expenditure on agency retainer fees.


Written Question
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs: Consultants
Monday 1st August 2022

Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much his Department has spent on consultancy fees in (a) 2020, (b) 2021 and (c) 2022; and what the name is of each consultancy contracted.

Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General

The provisional consultancy spend for 2021-22 is £26.970m for the Core Department and Agencies.

The department’s spend on consultancy is published each year in the Annual Report and Accounts.

2020-21

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/defras-annual-report-and-accounts-2020-to-2021 (page 100)

2019-20

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/defras-annual-report-and-accounts-2019-to-2020 (page 87)

The names of consultancies contracted are listed below

A LUCK ASSOCIATES

Actica Consulting Ltd

Aether Ltd

ALCHEMMY CONSULTING LTD

Alexander Mann Solutions LTD

Amber Employment Services Ltd

Amec Foster Wheeler

ARCADIS CONSULTING UK LTD

Arpexas (Scotland) Ltd

Bankserve

Beamans Ltd

Biopharma Consulting (BPC)

BLUE BORDER LTD

Broadhead Global Ltd

Business Solutions Limited

Capita

Change Associates Ltd

Commercial Consultancy Ltd

Costain Ltd

CURRIE and BROWN UK LTD

Daisy Communications Limited

Deloitte LLP

Dirac Delta Solutions Ltd

Dr Gabriele Hesselbein

Dr Marion Simmons

Dr Vanessa Carn

DTA ECOLOGY LTD

EBC CONSULTING LTD

ENGINEERING SAFETY CONSULTANTS LTD

Eric Crutcher

Ernst & Young LLP (EY)

FINYX CONSULTING LTD

FIRST RESPONSE TRAINING and CONSULTANCY SERVICES LTD

Frontier Economics Ltd

G2 Recruitment Solutions

Government Legal Department

Health Management Ltd

Ingentium Ltd

IVDEOLOGY LTD

J Weeks

JACOBS UK LTD

John Points

Jones P Consulting Ltd

JSA Services Ltd t/a Workwell

Julie Gibson

Keep IT Simple

KLIFOVET AG

KPMG

KPMG Safi Al Mutawa & Partners

L T S INTERNATIONAL LTD

Learning Light

Local Partnerships LLP

Lockhart-Garratt

Louisa Wood

LSSC Ltd

M Botony

Management and Risk Solutions Ltd

MCKINSEY & CO INC UNITED KINGDOM

Met Office

Methods Business Digital Technology

METHODS CONSULTING LTD

Mo Gannon & Associates Ltd

Modality Systems Ltd

Morgan Langley

Network Rail

Nibiru Ltd

PA CONSULTING SERVICES LTD

Park Health & Safety Partnership LLP

Perfect Circle JV Ltd

Philippe Sabot Consultant (PSC)

PJM-HS CONSULTING LTD

PKM Digital Ltd

PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPERS LLP

Proxima

PUBLIC DIGITAL LTD

RADMAN ASSOCIATES LTD

Rare Little Beastie Ltd

RBS

REED

REQUIRED EXPERIENCE LTD

Richard Parker

ROYAL VETERINARY COLLEGE.

RSK GROUP PLC

Seed Science

SGS UK Ltd

Silversands Ltd

Stentiford, Grant

THE BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP UK LLP

The Neoteric Tech Company Ltd

The Research Box Ltd

Triple G Consulting Ltd

University Of Liverpool

VETERINARY VACCINES CONS LTD

Whiteball Ltd

WILLS TOWERS WATSON LTD

WRAP

WSP GLOBAL


Written Question
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs: Aviation
Friday 22nd July 2022

Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much their Department has spent on air travel for (a) Ministers and (b) officials in (i) 2020, (ii) 2021 and (iii) 2022.

Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General

The table below shows the amount spent on commercial air travel for Ministers and officials for calendar years 2020, 2021 and 2022, based on booking date.

2020

2021

2022

Ministers

£508.55

£1,354.13

£34,889.88

Officials

£95,931.59

£35,470.98

£286,116.75


Written Question
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs: Legal Costs
Wednesday 20th July 2022

Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much their Department and its associated agencies spent on legal disputes in (a) 2020, (b) 2021 and (c) 2022.

Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General

Defra and its associated executive agencies1 have incurred the following costs on Litigation for the calendar years 2020 to 2022 (up to 30/6/22):

Amount (£m)2

Calendar Year

0.93m

2020

1.47m

2021

0.61m

2022

1: Includes the Animal and Plant Health Agency; the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science; Rural Payments Agency and the Veterinary Medicines Directorate.

2: Source data from the Government Legal Department’s (GLD) electronic systems as at 8 July 2022. These figures represent the costs charged by the litigation team in GLD. It does not include any costs awarded against Defra or damages.